Hastings company delves into Carmen backstory​​​​​​​

Hastings’ new opera theatre company present a prologue to Carmen, a new, innovative and unique piece of drama, illuminating the well-known characters and propelling the audience into an abridged version of the original opera. In a dimly-lit tavern in 1930s pre-revolutionary Spain, they present a cabaret style first act. Company co-founder Anthony Flaum said: “Dialogue and music from a range of styles allow the characters in Carmen to reveal more about their lives, motivations and intertwined relationships.

“Every song and every word of dialogue in the Prologue brings us deeper into their world. We begin to truly understand who these characters are…and then it happens. Something truly dramatic brings Carmen and Don Jose together for the first time. The production has become Carmen! Becoming Carmen will engage, excite and entertain from the first note to the final curtain, challenging your preconception of both the original and the art form itself.”

As Anthony says: “Everyone has a back story. Everyone’s personality and the way they interact with others and the world around them has been heavily influenced and shaped by what has come before them. Nature and nurture. We are all sentient beings and gather information, process it, use it, sometimes discard it, allow it to control us or influence us or enable wholesale change within us. This information or stories can range from fascinating to frighteningly ugly and be formative in many different ways personally, professionally, psychologically and emotionally. Wherever one’s prologue lies on this scale, it helps to unpeel the layers of a person, shine a light on why they are who they are and allows a viewer to make their own judgment on a person. A prologue allows an audience to understand a character. Perhaps it might cause them to form a negative opinion about the character or conversely a positive one before the opera begins. It will nonetheless, provide a structure upon which to access a classic opera.

“Characters in any form of show are no different. They all have a prologue waiting to be told. In preparatory work for a role, performers often think about motivations and indeed, might even sketch out their own back story in their heads. Most performers should do this, in my humble opinion! What is so exciting about our USP as a company is that we get to share this work in a public forum as part of the show, accompanied with some wonderful music that supports the stories that we’ve worked on and leads us into the world of the characters in the opera. Prologue Opera was co-founded by myself and Celena Bridge, both proud St Leonards On Sea residents. Having met a number of years ago in the business on stage somewhere, Celena and I kept in touch. Through a shared passion for the art form, a mutual desire to dismantle pre-conceived ideas about the lines between theatre and opera and a yearning to produce our own work, we set about discussing this project in 2021 just as we were all emerging from the terrible effects of the pandemic. Many in this industry were hungry to get back out there and we were no different. We wanted to present top-quality entertainment. We label ourselves as an opera theatre company and want to bring audiences in that might not consider opera as an option for a night out. It is! On the operatic stage, you see real-life emotions and characters and experience some top-flight music and drama.”​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​